A Heart
by Sparky Dorian
Summary: He pretended not to care about anything, but in reality, Tony Stark had one great weakness: He cared too much.


_AN: So, uh, this is my first time publishing anything Marvel-related. I absolutely adore them all, though. I'm still learning more about canon, so a lot of this might be inaccurate. My lovely friend Spockologist gave me the prompt "Tony Stark has one great weakness. What is it?" And after hating her for filling me with angsty ideas, I wrote this. I'd love any comments you care to offer. Thanks for reading! :)_

Tony Stark was a man of many talents. He could fix a car with both hands tied behind his back. He could build just about anything. He could cook a gourmet meal, given three hours and a book full of instructions. (And a fire extinguisher. Always needed one of those.) And, as recent events had proved, he could give a press conference in his sleep.

He had a few less savory talents as well.

Tony could lie his way up the side of a tree. He could perform most basic activities while drunk out of his mind. He could pretend to feel and be a million things he wasn't.

Tony had no qualms about sharing most of his skills. In fact, he enjoyed it.

But Tony Stark was also a man of many weaknesses, and he hid those with a fervor that he devoted to very few things in his life.

There were quite a few things that Tony considered weaknesses in his mind. He had never been very good at conversation. Not when it mattered, anyways. Besides the sketches he needed for work, he couldn't draw to save his life. He couldn't hold a steady relationship. He couldn't remember important dates no matter how hard he tried.

These weaknesses were all fairly small, and when pressed, he would admit to most of them.

But Tony Stark had one great weakness, one that he tried to hide even from himself.

He cared too much.

Ever since he'd been a boy, he had cared too much. At first, he had thought nothing of it. If something made him sad, he cried. If something made him happy, he laughed. If someone was upset, he tried to comfort them. But the endless stream of employees and bodyguards and mechanics and minders that were constantly in his home talked about him, as if he couldn't hear it.

"That Stark boy's going to turn out a womanly sort. Wears his heart on his sleeve 24/7. The boss ought to be ashamed."

"He's just a kid. There's still hope for him."

"Not if his dad's always too busy for him. The boy needs someone to show him how to be a man."

"Maybe that's _why_ he's always too busy for him. He's given up."

These were among the milder things that they said, but they pierced straight to his small heart. Almost without realizing it, he began to hide things. His smiles became a little smaller, his actions a little more distant. He spent too many evenings alone in his room, hugging his legs tight to his chest and pressing his eyes into his knees to keep the tears held at bay.

He wouldn't cry. Not if that was going to embarrass his dad.

When his efforts went unnoticed, and his dad was still just as busy, as withdrawn, as hesitant, he cared too much about that, too. He tried so hard, and nothing ever worked. So he tried harder, and pretended not to try at all.

When he was nearly twelve and he found himself being shipped across the country, he responded with cool indifference. He certainly didn't spend his first few nights in the private room (which just gave the other boys another thing to ridicule him about) alone and not-crying. He definitely didn't feel his heart crack every time they called him terrible things, and his parents didn't answer the phone when he finally got up the courage to call.

"You don't belong at this school," one of the older boys shouted at him one day, when they'd cornered him in the musty alley behind their chemistry building. "You can't do _anything_ right. The only reason you're here is because your daddy paid for it."

"Maybe he just wanted to get rid of you," his friend sneered.

They were both taller than him by several inches, but he launched himself toward the first and punched him in the jaw just the same.

When he came out of the fight with a black eye and a broken wrist and had to sit and listen to his father lecture him about fighting over the phone, he told himself he didn't care about that, either.

He graduated the six-year school in a year and three months. After his graduation ceremony his father put a hand on his shoulder and told him he was doing alright. It was the closest he'd gotten to praise in a long time, and it warmed and broke Tony at the same time.

Four years later, the accident happened.

Tony went to the funeral, sitting hunched in the front row and numbly reading the words they handed him.

He didn't care. It didn't hurt.

Not at all.

When he returned to his childhood home and started to clean up their things, he scooped up all the relics of their past, gloves from baseball games they'd never played, patches from Scout meetings only his mother had attended. He told himself it didn't make a difference. They were dead anyway. In the end, he hired a service to finish it.

Even though they were gone, he still cared too much.

The next few years flew by in a blur of alcohol and wild parties as he fought to make himself forget. It didn't work in the end. Nothing ever did. He made his public reappearance and played nice for the press, just happy to have Stark Industries to give himself something to do again.

Nothing really mattered. He built weapons and he sold them. He had so many flings that he couldn't remember most of them. He drank far too much.

After Afghanistan, everything changed.

He was reminded about caring. About accountability and not hurting people, and forty years ago, making cakes with Mrs. Reeds after his dad had a bad day, and watching as the corners of his mustache lifted in an almost smile as he took the first bite.

So he started to fix things.

It seemed to work at first, too. Everyone said he was crazy, that he was doing the absolute worst thing possible, but hadn't they always?

Then Oby betrayed him. Discarded him, hated him, used him, hurt him, left him. Just like everyone else.

He didn't care.

He didn't care that he was dying, either, when he found out. It didn't matter. He didn't have much to live for at that point, anyway. He hated to leave Pepper with such a mess, though, after all she'd done for him. So he sold things to any organization that had ever made a difference to him (the Scouts, the hospital that had saved his Grandmother's life for a little longer, the rehab center). He made her CEO, and even more people started to slip away from him.

And when Natalie him that simple answer, it brought back all the old aches again.

"I'd do whatever I wanted to, with whoever I wanted to do it with."

He didn't care that his life was empty. Until he did.

So he drank too much and went down to a room full of people who he didn't know and drank some more, and he hurt his best friends. Things ended how they always did, with him alone in a dark room, his eyes pressed against his knees.

Then, finally, _finally_, things started to look up. He and Pepper got together, and he managed to not screw it up. (Okay, yes, he did screw it up for awhile. Badly. But they always worked it out, and that made all the difference.) The Avengers Initiative took off, slowly gaining more recruits. He even got promoted from consultant to a full-fledged member.

He met Steve, Thor, Clint. He got to live in a base with people who he could laugh with, who had his back, who would notice if he was gone.

"Tony," Steve said one night. "I figured out how to use that drawing computer you got me." His ears pink, he handed over a printed-off sketch of a window and the cat that had inexplicably taken up residence in the base, and the stupidly pleased and proud grin that they shared made Tony ridiculously happy.

"Man of Iron, I too have an accomplishment to share." Thor paused in his inhalation of food to pull something from his pocket and set it gently on the table. It was a tiny, faintly crumpled origami crane. "Agent Romanova has taught me how to make paper creatures."

Pepper, on a rare night off, was seated between Thor and Tony, and she leaned over, congratulating the man enthusiastically.

Tony looked over to Natasha, who was blushing furiously. Thor gave a puppyish smile and Tony laughed out loud. The God of Thunder folding cranes. If he'd heard it from someone else, he wouldn't have believed it.

Bruce came in from the kitchen holding a platter of chocolate chip cookies. The man had revealed a secret gift for baking, much to everyone else's surprise and delight. All of them were quickly snatched up from the table, Clint nearly losing a finger to Natasha's lightning-quick grab.

"These are so good," Steve said, patting Bruce on the back.

"Most pleasing," Thor mumbled through a mouthful.

Pepper leaned her head against his shoulder, and Tony looked around the table, unable to restrain the grin that spread across his face. All of a sudden it had hit him. He had friends. These people, these insane, wonderful people. They were his friends. They were all in this together, for better or worse.

And they all cared.


End file.
